Every year I scratch my head at why we are still doing Daylight Savings. I’m not quite ready to prepare for a long winter.
Cross-Posted from my Substack. (Please subscribe if you’d like this in your weekly inbox!)
This Week in Good Things
I feel like I’m perpetually saying “I’m not sure how it’s… (insert the day/month here) already!” – but truthfully, I’m not sure how it’s November 5th already! Here are some of the highlights from my week!
🦹🏻♀️ Ask your friends what they think your Super Power is. Go ahead, text them right now. This week I was heading on a podcast (Becoming You with my friend Rebecca Cafiero!), and to pump myself up, I asked some of my friends to text me what they thought my superpowers are. What I received was honestly the greatest gift. Some of the highlights – not because I’m trying to brag here, just because I felt so SEEN:
“Fuckin joy with intention in everyday things!!!!! And sharing and organizing that experience. You are an amazing resource for me because of how you live your life every day and how you want to share everything. You’re like having the no 1 lifestyle magazine for a friend 😄” [Editors note: I *do* aspire to live life as incredibly as current Martha Stewart]
“Finding systems where things seem mis-aligned.”
“Productive directness, really helpful feedback, and x-ray vision.”
“I can’t say it better than productive directness! And concrete, authentic discussion and strategy. OH! And genuine curiosity.”
✨Find the opportunities to see your closest friends in their element! ✨ I got to sneak into the Business Leadership Council at Wellesley to see my bff Heather speak on an AI panel. Biggest takeaways? How do we regulate AI without stifling innovation? (It’s okay for legislation to be *behind* – so that we don’t over-regulate.)
🖼 I also got to see Diana Greenwald, curator at the Isabella Stewart Gardner interviewed by my fellow Wellesley alum, Rudina Seseri (founder of Glasswing Ventures). I took pages of notes from Diana’s talk. Some of the more interesting themes: museum spaces providing consistency in a world of chaos and: how is this art making me think vs. providing a purely aesthetic experience? and AI forcing new points of creativity in the arts (as a good thing!) and also ISG’s brilliance forming a unique endowment structure for her museum, which would provide for a strong director, weak trustees, and no more than a 5% draw.
🐾 I also just noticed that Diana has written a book called Isabella Stewart Gardner: Dog Lover, which I shall be acquiring for myself. On that note, I’m starting to think about signature holiday gifts. I love the idea of passing along something special that you really love to all of your friends.
✅ Tackled a nagging task: had an extra key made (in about 3 minutes at the Ace Hardware.) It’s been on my to-do list for months – one of those things that takes no time at all when you actually set forth and do it. On Saturday morning, Heather was up to do errands with me, so we knocked it out!
Bonus: I got to leave an event with several bouquets of flowers! Perks of being a local!
Interesting Ideas:
The difference between reporting the weather, versus being in the weather outside. (A metaphor for logical mind vs. feeling your feelings.)
Good Things in the World:
Reading. Stephen King’s newest book, Holly. And finally kicked off Sanderson’s Mistborn series. A few hundred pages in, I’m generally enjoying it, but I’m not sure what I’m in for!
Down time. Been watching Loki on Disney+, and the Great British Bake Off.
Perfect bites. If you are every in the Wellesley area, a sandwich at The Linden Store.
Organized life. I’ve been eyeing hobonichi yearly planners from the Paper Mouse.
Now and Then. I thought it was odd that the Beatles would release a song that was on John’s cutting room floor. But it’s cool that it was recorded over the span of almost 50 years.
Hate to love. A month in, I reluctantly will tell you that my (refurbished) Dyson air wrap hair dryer pretty darn magical. It dries my foot and a half of hair in about 4.5 minutes. I was secretly hoping I’d hate it.
Emotions. Watching Dan Povenmire call his daughter at school to tell her she has been nominated for an Emmy. (Cue the tissues.)
Good Words: Phoenicopter. What I will be calling flamingos from now on.
The week of the quarterly shipment boxes! I’m expecting my quarterly Noma box, by Rancho Gordo Bean club box, and I got my Burlap + Barrel Spices this week.
Sunday: Pasta with pork shoulder, cauliflower, cheddar
Monday: Chicken thighs with Floyd Cardoz Kashmiri Masala
Tuesday: Hodo Tofu, broccoli, DashiRX
Wednesday: Dinner at an event at the Museum of Fine Arts!
Thursday: Big salad with fridge scraps.
Friday: Pizza night (mushroom Cape Cod pizza with added pepperoni); big crunchy salad with red peppers and blue cheese
Lunches: Lamb Vindaloo, cold tofu with peanut sauce, pumpkin samosas from Trader Joe’s, Bambino Pizza.
Treats: I’ve been thinking about making a sweet custard like chawanmushi in my Anyday bowls. Dole Whip (the kind at the store, not at Disney, alas!)
👋 Greetings! I’ve just returned back from a few energy-infusing days in San Diego. Ironically the weather was significantly warmer in Boston the entire weekend, but I always love a good excuse to go West!
I was going to push this off to tomorrow morning, and then I remembered that I value both consistency and connection with humans. And I reminded myself that we don’t need to wait to say the perfect thing to reach out and say hello. So, hi!
This Week in Good Things
This felt like somehow both the longest and shortest week. Here are some of the highlights:
Revolutions start at the dinner table. 🍽 A dinner party! My friend Daria brought together 8 women from different parts of her life. None of us knew each other particularly well. Her invite, which I loved, promised: “This is an intimate dinner for remarkable women who are my friends and colleagues in the tech world. Come as strangers, eat delicious food, and leave as friends.” It delivered!
Note to self: find more opportunities to get together with amazing people at the the dinner table. I’d love to host something like this once a quarter!
Going home feeds the soul. I have many homes, but one of them will always be Wellesley. I was so thrilled to have an Ompractice booth at the employee benefits fair at the college. (Employees have free access, so this was extra fun because all I had to do was have wonderful conversations with some amazing people (including so many people who have been working there since I was a student almost 20 years ago!)
On Thursday at 5am, I hopped a flight over to San Diego, to experience (and speak!) at Weekend at the Pitch Club, surrounded by incredible women leading mission driven businesses. I’ll be sorting through my 27 pages of notes this week, but here were a few things I noticed.
Rituals make life feel more meaningful. I experienced my first cacao ceremony. As someone who both loves the taste of good chocolate, and finds myself particularly moved by taste memories, this was a wonderful experience. Looking forward to bringing more small rituals like this back into my day-to-day life.
Good spaces drive good ideas. I had a half day workshop in an inspiring work space in San Diego, in the San Diego Made Factory. I always find that ideas come when I’m surrounded by plants, incredible people, and good architectural bones.
The water is my happy place. In San Diego, before each full conference day, I spent each day running on the water. My two favorite things: coming across the Saturday morning fish market where the fish were *massive* compared to any East coast catches, and people were walking off the dock with trash bags filled with a 40? pound fish they were carrying by the tail. And then seeing the Star of India this morning with people all over the rigging, ready to drop the sails for a special week!
Good Things in the World:
A week where I had curiously little consumption, I still bookmarked a handful of things, finished some good books, and made note of things I appreciate.
V.E. Schwab’s new book The Fragile Threads of Power (this is the first in a series, but not the first in the world. If you haven’t read A Darker Shade of Magic, I’d start there!
I watched a single episode S1 E1 of Vanderpump Rules, and I’m debating whether or not to take the leap in order to experience the ultimate reality television cultural phenomenon. (Or so I’ve been told.)
Chicken Katsu Curry. I used to eat this quite a bit in California, and it’s hard to find on the East Coast (unless you make it yourself!)
I got to actually see and hold one of my friend Jennifer’s Meemzy Magic Sensory Toy boxesin California! (I got the dinosaur one! I also got to give her a hug for the first time in about a decade! On that note, I got to give my friend Traca a quick drive-by hug while we were serendipitously in the same country and location on the same day. (Hugs are great.)
Rewatching the Wednesday Adams dance to get into the spooky season mood. The whole series is worth a re-watch.
This incredible home studio. How do I fill my home with more like this?
The Weekly Meal Plan:
After a long weekend of travel meals (some of them quite delicious!) I’m looking forward to being back in my own kitchen. And vegetables.
That said, one of the excellent things I ended up doing before leaving was eating down much of the fridge (the other excellent thing was a very good deep clean before travel). So I’m looking to restocking tomorrow night – usually I go straight to my “anytime shopping list” and go from there.
Sunday: Shakshuka (handed to me in a warm bowl when I returned from the airport)
Wednesday: Fish Chowder. (Sam Sifton’s no-recipe recipe.) I found a handful of good Red’s Best fish in a freezer drawer I had forgotten about this week.
Thursday: Dinner at a work-related thing!
Friday: Pesto pasta, before all my garden herbs are totally frozen.
Lunches: End of the chili, tofu, pumpkin samosas from Trader Joe’s (still in there!)
Snacks: overnight oats, Topaz apples from Volante.
That’s all for now! Hope you have a great week!
xo, Sam
PS: Tomorrow morning, I’m going to clean my computer keyboard. (On the off chance that you need to do that too, consider this a fortuitous reminder!)
Mindfulness, common ground, and the weekly meal plan.
Cross-Posted from my Substack. (Please subscribe if you’d like this in your weekly inbox!)
42 is my favorite number, so this week was a sure bet at being a good one for me.
I inherited a love of good numbers from my mother – I love a strong number, mathematical curiosity, palindrome, 11:11 special number, etc. Alas, I didn’t inherit my mom’s synesthesia – where numbers and letters have color!
Mindfulness Doesn’t Have to Be Hard?
I was at UMass this week speaking to a group of students, and one of them asked about starting a meditation practice.
I find that most of the time when people have tried meditation and it doesn’t work for them, it’s because they either ramped up too quickly, or found the wrong type of practice for them.
My favorite way to start building your mindfulness? Start where you are.
I’ve been practicing mindfulness and meditation every day for a decade – mostly because it’s much easier for me to do something every day than intermittently.
Tiny Tangent: Okay, have to pause here to mention the Twitter post I snorted when I read this week – “The Andrew Huberman ideology is built on the belief that we are controlled by unseen biological forces to which we must pay daily tribute. Insanely neurotic, low-agency way of living”; – @TenreiroDaniel (I have a really mixed complicated love/hate relationship with Huberman (neuroscientist, podcaster, pop-health influencer) – namely *most people* will never get to this “optimizing stage of health.. nor should they.)
I’m not sitting to meditate for an hour. While I’ve done deeper work with MBSR training that had me sitting for much longer periods of time – and very much enjoyed it, and admire friends who have been able to go on 10 day silent retreats, I don’t think that will ever be my personal goal.
My commitment is spending at least a few moments a day, usually 5-10 minutes, sometimes less, sometimes more, making time to work with my mind.
What keeps me practicing?
Finding Focus: I want to approach the day with a little more focus – practicing flexing my attention on the things I want to get done, and moments that I want to truly enjoy.
Boosting Energy: I frequently have to “spin up” to get something done or scratch the surface of deeper self reflection. Mindfulness practice helps me “tap in” and get there more quickly.
Even Mood + Less Rage: Sometimes the world is a lot. Okay, daily the world is a lot – when I practice mindfulness I’m focused on how I perceive the world around me, how to notice, and how to create energy boundaries.
6 ways I practice mindfulness that aren’t regular meditation:
Go for a walk and keep my phone in my pocket.
Sit with a cup of coffee and watch my dog sleep in the morning.
Watching a movie or tv show without multi-tasking on a phone.
“Noticing Walks” – pick either a color and snap photos of objects with that color, or “flower walk” – photos of flowers.
Standing barefoot in the backyard grass for a few minutes.
This Week in Good Things:
This week I had my quarterly gift to myself – a personal organizer who comes for three hours every quarter to help me move forward a larger scale project in my home. This time around I removed a wild amount of Tupperware from my kitchen, and removed enough so that when the dishwasher and sink are both empty, there’s space for everything put away. The real impacts? I cooked this week, I felt more focused to do my day to day work, and it spills out to everything else in my life. Looking to get more organized in life? Start with your physical space.
Good Writing: I wrote an essay I’ve been thinking about for a while: A List of Wants and Needs. In it, I get very specific: wants for work, my writing, the world, Ompractice, and some fun stuff (I’m looking at you, Disney Annual Pass).
“What do I want? What do I need?What am I not letting myself ask? Sometimes the thinking piece is harder even than saying it out loud. Sometimes the asking part is hard.”
Our Legacies: The poet Louise Glück died this week. I first got into her poems after taking a class at Wellesley on Lowell and Bishop with Frank Bidart. I like reading both Obituaries and Poetry, so I found myself reading a handful of them about her, then her Wikipedia page – her mother went to Wellesley! I went to high school with her editor’s child! –, and then diving back into some of her poems. My friend Lizzy also pointed out that she wrote poems that referenced Formaggio Kitchen, and she lived these days in Cambridge, which now makes me question is it possible I’ve struck up conversation with her and not even realized?
Tackling a nagging task. This weekend I found myself wading my way through half-finished errands: breaking down cardboard boxes, returning a box to Target via mail instead of wading into the weekend zoo. Returning a product I ordered from France that’s now taken me 3 weeks and 4 separate trips to try to return.
What does it mean to be “a regular”? I headed out to dinner with my mom and brother this week to the newly re-openedEastern Standard, a Boston institution. (Eating with my sibling is like eating with a celebrity. Everyone comes up to us to say hi.)
Good Things to Think About
🤝 How do we find our mentors in life? Try “Invisible Mentors”.While I think structured mentorship programs can be useful, often it’s hard to find people who have the time and space to participate. One way to get around this? What I call “Invisible Mentors”. Every so often when I’m trying to learn something new, get up to speed in a space, or advance, I start with making a list of people: who are the most innovative people in the space who are doing what I want to do? I then do a deep study on their writing, reverse engineer their path to where they are, and learn everything I can from them. Do they know me? No. But I believe we can learn from anyone. (Caveat: in this internet connected world, one thing I’m mourning about Twitter was that it was always very easy to reach out and actually connect with your “invisible mentors” on the platform. These days it’s a little harder!)
📣 What did you read that made you question something this week? Think differently? One thing I try to do every day is read the ideas and opinions of people I disagree with. I don’t want to live in an echo chamber. The next level is having conversations with people I disagree with, with the hopes of finding common ground. If you haven’t read it, I’d recommend Diane Hessan’s “Our Common Ground: Insights from Four Years of Listening to American Voters” the lessons of which go beyond politics.
🩴 How do you change your mind? This week, our friend conversation was about teaching a four year old about changing your mind, and how to convey age appropriate concepts on the topic. We talked about: “What kinds of things can we change our mind about” (agency) and “When can we change our mind” (predictability). It got me thinking about how we lose the ability to change our mind over time whether because society has beaten us out of it, or because we haven’t practiced. Have you changed your mind about something important lately? What would it take to change your mind?
🟢 Good Things in Action: if you have a few minutes today while scrolling social media – take a moment to pause and actually comment on someone’s post instead of just passively scrolling or “liking”.
Other Good Things
📺 Watch: I’ve been very much enjoying the documentary series onthe Beckham’s on Netflix. They come across as surprisingly thoughtful people, there’s very good conversation about mental health, bullying, perseverance, and grit. // Killers of the Flower Moon was a phenomenal book, and I’m looking forward to the Scorcese film that just came out.
🛒 Things to buy in quantity: over the years these have been great decisions – a package of several good scissors. I use for cooking – I have several and they go in the dishwasher and I don’t worry about it, one for my mail area, one in my office. G2 Gel Pens by the dozen. Sharpies in quantity. Anker fast charging cubes and several long charging cables. Packing tape in a 6 pack.
👅 Good Tastes: I subscribe to the Noma Tastebuds membership, and this Corn Yuzu Hot Saucewas one of the best new things I tried. (This will sell out by the end of the week.) Trader Joes has Kimbap back in stock (sort of) after going viral a few months ago and selling out after I had very much enjoyed the one I tried. I went on a yearly McDonalds Pilgrimage to try out the Mambo sauce with a 10 piece Chicken McNuggs and Fries in Palmer, MA. They were out of the sauce. I should give a special shout out to my one thing I get more frequently than once a year – the Mango Pineapple Smoothie which I find to be very good.
The Weekly Meal Plan:
This weekend, I had some energy to cook my favorite thing in fall: a pot of chili. I start mid-fall, and usually make a pot once a week or two through the entire winter. My method is typically a pound (or two) of ground meat which I heavily season, chopped onion, chopped pepper, a can of beans, a can of diced tomatoes, and then a jar of salsa of choice. (Today’s was pepita salsa from Trader Joe’s.)
Sunday: Mushroom pizza and salad with red peppers, blue cheese, and fried onion
🥔 You know how you could do that? A friend posted about what to do with a baked potato this week, and I got a little excited in the thread:
Take a peek at Turkish “Kumpir” – it’s baked potato as STREET FOOD. You basically load up with an outrageous amount of stuff.I’m always a fan of chili topping, but you can get VERY creative. I like to theme globally – ie “Greek Potato: feta, chopped olives, chopped parsley and dill, souvlaki or lamb”; Spanish Potato: chorizo, deconstructed patatas bravas – ie – tomato-ey sauce, garlic mayo. Etc.
Breakfast Baked Potato: loaded with eggs, cheese, bacon.Taco Potato: all the fixins of taco night.. on a potatoAlso – some of the great global potato dishes – corned beef hash.. potato.Canadian Potato: poutine baked potato, or Montreal Style potato with Schwartz’s smoked meat, sauerkraut, pickles, side of Cel-Ray or Black Cherry soda.
Also! Potatoes are great to stick little flags in to make your potato more “festive”.
The Second Lunch is a (mostly) food blog by Sam Tackeff about recipes, food writing, ingredient hunting, travel, healthy living, fitness, and everything in between.
Please do not steal! Email me at sam [at] thesecondlunch.com – if you’d like to use one of my photos, and I’d be happy to share my terms. Thanks!
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